Focus magazine article,
Summer 2003
Finding the right property
By Margaret Buntrock
It's a standard joke among estate agents that buyers
look for one type of property but actually purchase something
completely different. A couple seeking a period property
buy a modern "box", while a person wanting a
rustic cottage ends up with an apartment. Agents think
this is highly amusing, but it is really a sad indictment
of the property market.
As anyone who has bought a property knows, house purchase
is often a frustratingly difficult and messy business. The
system is not designed to help the property buyer and many
people fail to reach even the important first hurdle - finding
the right property - because of obstacles in the way.
Firstly, of course, there is no single information source
that provides details of all properties for sale. Instead,
estate agents control their own separate lists and since
the number of agents has mushroomed in recent years, any
one location will be covered by a multitude of companies,
making it very difficult to know about every property for
sale. (For example Guildford currently boasts nineteen agents.)
Secondly, because the control of property information resides firmly with estate
agents, the marketing of homes is permeated by a thick
fog. Agents are so fiercely competitive, they like to
give the impression they operate in their own private
airspace, as if in denial that there are other agents
or homes for sale in their area. The level and quality
of information that agents provide is often laughably
poor and many of them inhabit a world of half-truths which
affects their own perception so that they are incapable
of recognising when a property is in a noisy location
or has inadequate family accommodation. If a property
has already been rejected by fifty viewers, will they
tell you? Of course not!
The Property Misdescriptions Act was supposed to eradicate
misleading or inaccurate descriptions, but it does not
legislate about what agents choose to leave out of their
sales details - a house may be close to a pylon or railway
line but this will not appear in the sales details. And
this is true of agents at the top of the market, as well
as the bottom.
The reality is that agents are in the business of selling
homes, not providing information or a home-buying service
and so they are not interested in transparency. Their
position of power increases in inverse proportion to the
depth of ignorance and naivety of the house-hunter. Prospective
buyers need all the help they can get. Hence the growth
in popularity of homesearch companies who aim to shine
a torch through the fog of the property market and ensure
that house hunters buy the right house.
Estate agents project themselves as working for the buyer,
but of course they don't, their contract is with the vendor.
" We fight our client's corner," says Rupert Bradstock
of Property Vision, a leading homesearch service that
was set up twenty years ago. Rupert Bradstock pinpoints
the oft ignored fact about estate agents - they are paid
by the vendor and thus work for the vendor, not the buyer.
So it makes sense that buyers should have someone working
on their behalf. Since buying a property is usually the
most important and biggest purchase anyone undertakes, the
decision to employ someone to provide expert advice and
assistance makes sense. Most other big purchases in life
are not usually made without first seeking impartial advice
or further information and it's easy when choosing a car,
private schooling or a financial investment to research
and check out independent opinions via magazines, professional
expertise or friends' experiences, but when it comes to
finding and choosing an individual property that costs hundreds
of thousands of pounds, buyers are on their own ( that is,
apart from the selling agents).
A homesearch service undertakes the time-consuming donkey
work of contacting agents, looking for properties, viewing
homes and reporting back, weeding out properties that
do not match the client's requirements or that have serious
drawbacks. As a result clients need only look at properties
that really match their individual criteria. These days,
because there are so many estate agents, a serious property
hunt is almost a full-time job and it is repetitively
mind-numbing work (many buyers complain that having taken
the time to register with agents they never hear back
from them).
Moreover, when people first start looking for properties
they are shown seriously-flawed homes that have been on
the agents' books for a long time. Viewing such properties
can be very dispiriting and many would-be buyers actually
give up at this stage or then grab at the first half-decent
home that comes along. Professsional home-finders not
only already know about these rejects but can also give
an informed overview to their clients, providing advice
on local market conditions and price movements. The house-hunter
is no longer operating in ignorant isolation.
Television companies have cottoned onto the concept of
the homesearch agent and programmes such as Location,Location,
Location and Escape to the Country have
made media stars out of people like Kirstie Alsopp and
Phil Spencer But how accurate are these programmes in
representing the service provided by a homesearch agent?
Certainly, they bear no resemblance to the service provided
by my company, Surrey Homesearch, and of course each TV
property hunt is dictated by the constraints of the programme
format. Thus while most homesearches take place over a
number of months, on Location, Location, Location
they last less than two days! Moreover, the professional
homefinders are usually strangers to the chosen location,
which rather defeats the object - a good homesearch agent
should be an expert on their chosen area, be aware of
local problems and often know the sales history of individual
properties. Not surprisingly, some of the selected properties
shown in the TV programmes fall outside the client's brief
or budget, or are in a bad location.
However, one key aspect of preperty buying that these
shows do highlight is that buyers have individual criteria
- a fact that estate agents tend to ignore. A good homesearch
agent works to a very tight brief dictated by the client's
own particular needs. And you cannot assume anything.
One person wants to be near the shops, another wants to
be in a remote location (though one person's isolated
village can be another's creeping suburbanisation) one
buyer needs a triple garage, another wants a house without
a garden! A common misconception is that homesearch clients
must be too lazy or too indifferent to look for themselves.
But the opposite is true. Homesearch clients tend to be
more choosy, not less; they won't settle for second-best
and have often been property-hunting themselves without
success, so decide to bring in the professionals.
What type of people use homesearch agents? All sorts,
from overseas buyers to successful locals with busy lives,
from people relocating for their jobs to couples with
toddlers for whom viewing houses can be a nightmare. Homesearch
may primarily be about properties, but it is also about
people and especially families. Sue Hurford, who runs
GBDK Ltd Relocation Solutions in Buckinghamshire and whose
background is in personnel, finds this aspect of the business
particularly satisfying. "When we are moving a family
we have to understand their lifestyle and make sure the
location suits every member. It's a very high level of
personal service."
An additional advantage of employing homesearch agents
is that they often have information about a property before
it comes to market. At Property Vision, Rupert Bradstock
maintains that 63% of their clients purchase properties
before they are advertised. At Surrey Houses we recently
found a property for an English family moving back from
Japan. The house exactly matched their criteria, we video-ed
it for the clients, the wife flew over to view it, and
they had their offer accepted before the sales brochure
was even printed. Now the vendors of that property can't
find what they are seeking, so we are on our way...
Margaret Buntrock is a director of Surrey
Houses, an independent information resource for property
buyers in Surrey
Venice, Italy
Off on a tangent, we know, but if you are wanting to buy a property in the city of Venice, Italy, we can help. For further information email venice@surreyhouses.com. For a taster, read the following article from The Daily Telegraph - here
|
